


Dementia

by Umi (umichii)



Series: 30 Kisses [14]
Category: Groove Adventure RAVE | Rave Master
Genre: Drinking, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M, Past Child Abuse, Smoking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-08 22:10:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20842826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/umichii/pseuds/Umi
Summary: What started as Sieg projecting his insecurities onto Shuda turned into a mess of rehashing old vices and bad memories.





	Dementia

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally written for the 30_kisses LJ challenge, prompt: Wada Calcium CD3
> 
> The original version of this was very plotless and just two guys feeling old and angsting about it. But with this rewrite, it sorta adopts the lore of imperial prince!Sieg universe, where Shuda was Sieg's bodyguard before he became a bounty hunter and Sieg a time mage.

Side by side, Shuda and Sieg stroll down the aisle of canned goods. It was the only grocery in sight in this random floating island that no one has heard of. Out of sheer bad luck, the two ended up saddled with the task of replenishing their food supplies.

Shuda eyes the four cans of tuna Sieg was holding.

“Are you sure there’s no more tuna?”

Sieg shrugs and tosses the cans into the cart. “We have a humanoid penguin and some strange creatures who will eat anything.” He walks away without a glance, leaving the cart for Shuda to push.

Shuda grabs a can and reads the large print of ‘Omega 3’ on its label. It’s ironic that Sieg bothers with the healthier food options when he has a terrible disregard for his own body.

“What do you think of health supplements.”

Startled, Shuda blinks and looks up to find Sieg holding a small white canister of calcium. 

“What?”

“I noticed you’ve been slouching and rubbing your lower back a lot. Admittedly, we’re not getting any younger. You’re almost thirty, aren’t you?”

“Thirty isn’t old. Have you seen Gale?”

Sieg grabs a can of beans and hums thoughtfully. He puts it back after a second.

“What’s gotten into you? You don’t usually care about this sort of thing.” 

Shuda knows Sieg has been needing more rest lately. Powering up the ship’s defenses had taken its toll on him physically, and with Shakuma’s last ambush, it wiped out Sieg for two days.

“I just don’t want you holding anyone back. I wouldn’t want to think I’m holding anyone back.”

“Then buy it for yourself,” Shuda snaps, irritated. “I don’t need it.”

Sighing, Sieg he crosses his arms across his chest and turns to stare him down. “I’m just saying you should do something about it before it becomes a problem.”

“There’s no problem here,” he growls back. “The only problem here is that you’re projecting your own shit on everybody else.”

With hands literally thrown up into the air in defeat, Sieg walks away-- but not without tossing the calcium tablets into the car.

In the check-out counter, Shuda charges it along with a box of XL-sized condom to Sieg’s account out of pure spite.

* * *

By the time they arrive back at the ship, both are a mile away from each other. The tension was terrifyingly fragile that when Julia saw them onboard, she flinched. 

Shuda left the grocery bag in the middle of the common room table, where Musica saw the large box of condoms staring up at him with its glossy exterior. 

Shaking his head, Musica glares at the two oldest members of this ragtag team of heroes with the full power of his disappointment. “Really? In the middle of a war?”

Meanwhile, Julia took the initiative to save Haru and Belnika’s virgin eyes, only to forget Niebel poking his head at the sound of Sieg’s return. Their not-quite baby looks at the box then turns to Sieg. With pure wonder, he asks, “Who’s that for?”

“Definitely not you,” Sieg answers solemnly.

In the background, Musica cries. “He’s barely twelve! He shouldn’t even know what it is!” 

“In Mildea, we give our young proper education about their mind and body.”

The box of condoms was ignored in the end upon the arrival of Elie as they shifted their attention to preparing dinner. It fell on Let to give the box its due respect by covering it up with an overturned basket.

“You know,” Sieg mutters, “you can take half of it. I’m sure it fits you.”

Let instantly flushed beet red up to the tips of his hair, Julia howling, “You bet he does!” and ran away.

Shuda threw another can of tuna at Sieg’s head. “Stop picking on him being bigger than you!”

“I’m not. I’m just stating the truth,” Sieg mutters, rubbing at the sore spot where the can hit him. “You’re just jealous because you can’t relate, Mr. I-can’t-keep-an-erection.”

“Too much information!” Musica yells at them, and that was the end of it as dinner was brought out and enjoyed in relative peace. 

* * *

  
  


After everyone has finally gone to bed, Sieg crawls out of his shared bunk with Shuda (because Musica has a wicked sense of humor, that punk) for the kitchen. He fixes himself a proper late-night dinner: a tuna sandwich.

He hears the scraping of chair on wood before Shuda’s raspy voice.

“There should be some more of the noodles in the chiller.”

With a sandwich on hand and tea on the other, Sieg affixes himself on the chair beside the redhead.

“You know, I was just joking. About the erection.”

“I know.”

A flick of a lighter then the small flash of red was all the warning Sieg has before Shuda puffs on his nicotine stick. The sight of the cigarette lighting sends his appetite away, much to Sieg’s disappointment.

Once upon a time, he tried to make Shuda quit. Like a true bounty hunter, Shuda tried to bargain with him-- an eye for an eye, after all-- and that was the end of it. Sieg conceded that to each their own vice.

“When are you going to stop?”

The look Shuda gives him with his single eye was cold but also burns with a quiet anger that reminds Sieg of the times in their very distant past when Shuda finds him defenseless in a ditch. It was a look that makes Sieg feel less of a person and more of a memory carried by obligation.

Sieg hated that feeling. He hated the idea that at some point in their shared life, he was the reason that took away Shuda’s choice.

Ashes fall and gradually collects into a small mound on the table. Shuda leans back on his chair in a lazy sprawl. Silence falls between them like it usually does when they’re left to their own devices, alone in their own worlds.

“I stopped for a while.”

Sieg gets up to put the tuna sandwich in the fridge and comes back with a bottle of whiskey and two short glasses.

“I thought you stopped drinking.”

“I did.”

“What’s that then?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” was what Sieg wanted to say. Instead, he says, “I went back after.”

The ‘after what’ goes unsaid, as it was the same point for Shuda as well. 

“Then you know what it feels like,” Shuda says after taking a drag. The feeling of helplessness, of needing reliance on an inanimate object to feel any semblance of being alive.

Sieg snorts derisively. He’s too damn intimate with that feeling. Fell into bed with it too many times, in fact.

Shuda fills up the two glasses to the brim with the whiskey. Neither bothered with ice.

“I remember when you got addicted to sex.”

“It was the same. More or less. Just… messier.”

“I lost count how many times I had to clean up after your ass.”

“I lost count too,” Sieg shrugs. Shuda finishes half of his glass in one gulp as Sieg takes Shuda’s cigarette for a long drag.

More ashes litter the table. 

“Sometimes I wonder if this is what it feels like, to be utterly incapable of being a decent human being,” Shuda whispers in between puffs of smoke. “We’re so afraid of what is to come, we grab for anything that comes near us just to have that tiny bit of control.”

Sieg chuckles softly. He refills their glasses, the bottle clinking against glass. “It’s funny how in our efforts to gain control, we lose our mind and now we’re stuck in this limbo.”

“Sieg?”

Light pours in from behind, startling the two in their seat. 

Niebel enters the kitchen, rubbing his still sleepy eyes. 

Sieg doesn’t bother hiding his drink. Contrary to popular beliefs held by the people in this ship, Niebel is both a child and also not a child anymore, a fact that no one other than Sieg can understand. By the time Sieg puts him under his wings, the boy has already seen more horrors than what was right. They are similar in that sense. They were both boys who lost their innocence too young.

* * *

When Niebel sees the two glasses of whiskey, one half empty and the other a quarter full, the small mountain of ash in between, he knows. 

“Oh,” was all he could say. “Nevermind,” goes unsaid, and that was the end of it. It’s not because Niebel is a good boy who knows when not to ask, but it’s because Niebel knows Sieg well enough to know when Sieg is simply in one of his headspaces where not even Niebel could reach. He only needs to trust Sieg to find himself before dawn rises.

“I’ll join you in a while.”

Niebel shakes his head. “It’s alright. I’ll be fine.”

One sleepless night doesn’t mean anything anymore now that he sleeps more regularly since being reunited with Sieg. The monsters visit him less at night, and he doesn’t always cry himself to sleep with Sieg nearby. 

* * *

Sieg probably doesn’t know his eyebrows pinches together whenever he’s concerned, as is the case now with the sudden appearance of Niebel. 

Shuda knows that somewhere during the time he and Sieg got separated after they went their separate ways, Sieg took on his role as a guardian and Niebel his as a distressed child of nobility. 

But unlike Shuda, Sieg grew a heart and actually cared about his charge.

In the small confines of their sleeping quarters, it’s easy to overhear the soothing coos of comfort coming from Sieg every time Niebel cries out from a night terror. He doesn’t need to look at Sieg to guess how much it must have broken his heart the first time the boy jolts out of a nightmare.

“He reminds me of you,” Shuda wants to say. “He makes me think of you when you were his age.”

He says nothing, and lights up a new stick instead. He goes back to his earlier position, head tilting up towards the ceiling. His chest feels tight and yet empty too every time he remembers the annoying, skinny kid of his past. 

Out of pettiness, what comes out of his mouth instead was a harsh reminder. “You were ignored as a child too, right?”

The scraping of wood on wood is immediate. Sieg stands up in jerky movements. But instead of walking out, he walks to the back of Shuda’s chair, and for a frightening second, Shuda thought, “this is it,” this is the moment Sieg finally loses it and strangles him to death.

Sieg bends over until his face hovers above Shuda’s. Their gazes meet but there’s not a shred of mirth in Sieg’s, no smile, no expectations of anything. Shuda returns the gaze as much as he could, though truth to be told, he doesn’t really have anything to give anymore.

Slowly, Sieg lowers his head until his lips touch Shuda’s. It was just a small peck, nowhere near a kiss. It was as emotional as a rock, yet when Sieg stands up and leaves Shuda’s side a blink after, something hard and heavy rushes through Shuda’s lungs and batters his chest in a wave.

It was the feeling of loss that he had not felt in years, that he never allowed himself the opportunity to acknowledge and mourn. And though Sieg had physically left his side to comfort his young adopted brother upstairs, his presence lingers in the darkness of the kitchen, a sliver of warmth that graces Shuda’s lips. For a second, he lets himself feel the ache and he lets it run its course, breath shuddering wetly.

When Shuda lights up his third stick, he sees a small, white canister behind the small flame of his lighter. The bottle of calcium supplement stares back at him, mockingly. 

In the end, Shuda brings the whiskey bottle with him to the deck. The vitamin sits inside the coldest corner of the refrigerator, right beside the tuna sandwich. 


End file.
